Meant To Be?
by Ispahan
Summary: Angel contemplates his relationship with Buffy


Title: Meant To Be?  
  
Author: Vivienne Westwood  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Pairing: Mentions, Buffy/Angel  
  
Spoilers: None. Set just after 'I Will Remember You', but before 'Hero'  
  
Summary: Angel contemplates his relationship with Buffy.  
  
Distribution: If you want it you just have to ask nicely.  
  
Feedback: Always welcome (kissmedeadly@hotmail.com)  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing.  
  
Angel walked downstairs to his apartment in the basement of his office. Buffy had just left, she was returning to Sunnydale. After coming to LA to tell him to stay out of her town, to stay away from her. His office was in ruins after the attack by the Mohra demon and Angel wasn't in the mood for company. He had just given up the one thing in the whole world he wanted. As Angel sat down on the sofa he sat and thought about his life with Buffy, and why he had pushed her away.  
  
It had never been simple, they had always been under attack, fiends from hell were always just around the corner. She was young, a Slayer, she had to grow up faster than she should have, when she should be thriving, she was killing demons, bearing the burden of saving the world, alone. He had wanted to help her from the moment he saw her outside her high school in LA. She was so in touch with life the reality that she was about to be removed from it, forced into a world of slaying, forced into a world which would most likely kill her before she was much older had been too much to bear.  
  
Angel often wondered what brought them together, besides the obvious deep attraction on both sides. A vampire and a slayer, hardly the stuff dreams are made of, she would say. What was it that made them fall back into a relationship with each other when even they knew deep down it was wrong. They knew the world had other plans for them, they knew they could never be together forever. Perhaps it was pure selfishness, a selfish desire that could only be sedated when they were together. Perhaps it was her way of rebelling against the powers that had made her a Slayer. To fall for a vampire was hardly what a Slayer was chosen to do. Perhaps it was his way of redeeming himself. He had committed man terrible acts, and the Slayer was a force for good, perhaps, by falling for her, by trying to help her he had been trying to save himself. He often considered that it was a way of punishing himself, it would never work, to keep going back to the one thing he could never have, to be close to her, so near to her and know he could never be with her. It was the ultimate way of making himself miserable for all eternity.  
  
He settled on the prospect that perhaps, as Spike had said, it was addiction. Something inside of them needed to be with the other, till the day they killed each other. Spike was right, they would be in love till it killed them, it nearly had, Angel knew if he had remained human for much longer they would both be dead. The fiends from hell would keep on coming, the evil would get stronger as they got weaker. Their love made them weak. They took too many chances for each other, too many selfish risks so that they could be together. It put the people they cared about most in danger.  
  
It hurt, more than he thought he could stand, when he realised he couldn't be with her. He never could. He had to push her away, there were too many people who counted on him, Cordelia, Doyle, even the people he had left behind in Sunnydale, they needed him to make a choice, because she never could. She would never give him up, she hadn't given him up after she sent him to hell, a part of her heart always called out for him. The addiction that would never go away. He wanted to give her a chance for a normal life, to experience a normal relationship before her duty as a Slayer got her killed. That was why he pushed himself away from her in Sunnydale, why he left, that was why he pushed her away now. He would never be normal, he could never give her that.  
  
Maybe in a twisted way that was why the Mohra demon had come to him, why he was made human. The part of him that still hoped that somehow it would work out, that he could get the girl and save the world Doyle would say, needed to be killed. He wasn't meant to be with Buffy, he knew it all along. Maybe that was the point of this whole exercise, if he was to help people he needed to be strong, he couldn't be strong with her. They weren't meant to be, they had to be given the opportunity to see that they would never work, he had passed the test. Maybe he had beaten his addiction. 


End file.
